


Silk and Steel

by purplekitte



Category: Horus Heresy - Various Authors, Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Angel Exterminatus, M/M, Missing Scene, PWP, Perturabo is 200 percent done with everything, Sibling Incest, still less gay than Graham McNeill's writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-02
Updated: 2014-01-02
Packaged: 2018-01-07 02:52:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1114616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplekitte/pseuds/purplekitte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Perturabo finds himself tolerating far too much from Fulgrim, because he can't be bothered to do otherwise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silk and Steel

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this while reading the book, so I actually had to tune down my natural tendency to imitate the style of whatever I was reading because I cannot write like McNeill with a straight face. Also, sorry the ending's so abrupt and tacked on; I got bored mid-sex scene and wandered off as usual.

Fulgrim’s hands lingered. He didn’t learn, no matter how often Perturabo brushed him away. He wondered if he should hit him away, distantly, but his volcanic temper slept under a muffling blanket of sheer confusion. He had no basis for understanding the changes that had overtaken his brother, no points of reference or familiarity.

He touched. He put his arm across Perturabo’s shoulders. He patted his hands and kissed his cheeks. He lingered there. He nagged the edge of his vision, bright colours meant to be noticed, always there, always greedy for attention. His clouds of perfume urged remembrance of him even when he was out of sight. Distracting, annoying.

His hands were soft. Weak. Perturabo knew better than to underestimate that about him.

‘What are you thinking about, brother?’

‘Logistical distribution for the fleets. You and I should--’

Fulgrim waved him off. ‘We have people to waste their time with such things. Horus’ quartermaster made sure we have no shortage of goats.’

What would they do with goats? No wait, Perturabo could guess way too much while trying not to think about it. He could also imagine Thyella paying the Emperor’s Children off with the luxuries they wanted while taking the best of the practical for the Warmaster’s fleet. She kept shipping Perturabo all the Mechanicum adepts that had come over to their side no one else wanted to deal with.

‘If you have your own affairs in order, then I leave you to it. Don’t bother my men to shore up your own inventories.’

‘I would never impose on you so, brother dear.’ Another pat, meant to be reassuring, or so Perturabo assumed.

Perturabo wasn’t sure what to say to that, what Fulgrim wanted from him. ‘Good.’

‘It is good. Brothers should help one another, but it shouldn’t be anything distasteful.’ Fulgrim exhaled in his ear, his breath warm and wet. ‘I’d hate you to feel that way when you could enjoy it so much.’

‘What? What are you on about now?’ Fulgrim played at being vague and coy and kept narcissistically ignoring that everyone didn’t know what he did.

‘You can top if you want.’ Fulgrim’s lips were touching his ear now, his soft fingertips and manicured nails running up and down his arm hypnotically. Perturabo’s muscles tingled like there had been some contact poison on Fulgrim’s skin. ‘I’d submit to you. I want to feel your power unleashed on me.’

Perturabo didn’t feel the deep revulsion he gathered he was supposed to at the very idea of ‘kinslayer’, he’d never felt a kinship worth much, but he saw with cold, calculated logic that Fulgrim was dangerous for all he cultivated his own ways of being underestimated.

Still it bore remembering: Fulgrim had loved, had delighted in Ferrus Manus like none other, and he had killed him. Perturabo had no desire to play at replacing him, if that was what Fulgrim was trying for.

Perturabo considered the layers of his brother’s intentions. He pretended to be uninterested in the past, but Ferrus’ death hung on him like an anchor around his neck, like a stain that wouldn’t come out of his skin. Not a quiet suffering for him but a loud, melodramatic one. “Out, damned spot!” He wore his overdone, showy emotions like mirror-armour, to hide what was truth and what was illusion even from himself.

He didn’t think Fulgrim was comparing them, though. He already had, and had dismissed Perturabo compared to his beloved Manus.

Good. Perturabo didn’t want to deal with the games and tantrums he would have inevitably fallen into if he were leading himself on.

‘Brother?’

‘I have a headache. Put on some pants.’

Fulgrim cooed in false sympathy and put his hands tenderly on Perturabo’s brown, massaging the cybernetic link-ups threaded through his scalp. It felt good, but superficial, not touching the pressure like a vice on his skull he hadn’t been lying about. If only Fulgrim could be less annoying.

His nails were sharp. Honestly they felt better than the attempts at softness. Perturabo could feel them, points of attention distracting away from the generalised ache of his sinuses.

‘I can make you feel all sorts of things,’ Fulgrim promised.

 _Just fuck him,_ some part of Perturabo said. _Who cares? He’ll be insufferable if you don’t. A little sport won’t turn you into one of his distasteful rabble. It won’t be that interesting. He doesn’t really want you either; it’s just an anything that moves thing._

‘Fine,’ he muttered, ‘but don’t forget I’m not one of your adoring followers. We can do this on my terms or not at all.’

‘Of course,’ Fulgrim said with a hint of condescension, but nothing Perturabo could call him on. ‘I want to make you happy, help you lighten up a bit. You’re so dour.’

_And you’re so frivolous. To accomplish your tasks and to do so well is what is worth striving for in life. Hedonistic delight is hollow._

He might have worried about managing enough interest in Fulgrim’s pawing at him, but the Phoenician would undoubtedly know what he was doing.

Then there was that boiling frustration under the surface, like an earthquake building in a fault line. The urge to strike out. Those idiots, always manoeuvring to improve their own position and for their self-serving glory, incompetent, untrustworthy, fawning after him for scraps or dismissing him entirely while trying to use him for anything they couldn’t be bothered with. He hated them all, everyone. They were easy to hate. Harder was holding back cuffing anyone who deserved it until they all stopped bothering him and did what he wanted.

Fulgrim would like it, and he wouldn’t change.

Perturabo let Fulgrim kiss his mouth. His lips were soft and wet and moved against his in ways that at once made them tingle and teasingly hinted at more without giving it. He was almost overwhelmed by Fulgrim’s scent so close--musk and perfume and pheromones that made even him dizzy and nauseous for a moment.

Fulgrim took advantage of his slight gags to slip his tongue into his mouth and run it over his teeth and gums and tried to engage his tongue in a playful tangle.

‘Are you planning to lie there like a doll while I have my wicked ways with you? You could, but it’s not you. Take the offensive. Take you pleasure. Take me. Come on, Perturabo, you--’

Perturabo slammed Fulgrim back against the wall of _Cavea Ferrum_ and mashed their mouths together equally violently just to shut him up. Their bodies pressed against one another, and Fulgrim’s hardness was at once both sickening and arousing.

He had permission. Fulgrim wasn’t in any position to complain later if he got rough. There was no reason to hold back. He kneed Fulgrim between the legs and he moaned.

‘Let’s get to my rooms then.’

‘Right here.’ Fulgrim’s dark eyes were wide and glazed.

The immediacy of his need for violence and his tightly coiled frustration like that. Now. Here. ‘Fine.’

He threw Fulgrim down with his whole weight behind it, scattering blueprints and a fine dust of metal shavings. Despite his seemingly impulsive randomness, the movement of papers and their bodies fit into the instinctive organisation system of his workshop that only he understood without too much disruption.

Fulgrim wrapped his legs around his hips and groaned. ‘Yes. Now ravage me.’

‘Just. Shut. Up,’ Perturabo ground out. It was good, how they pressed together. Even more so just the fact it was movement, action, explosive force after all that staying calm, staying still.

Fulgrim’s hand grasped at his hips, worked at the fastenings of his trousers. If they were going to do this, there was at least a convenience to Fulgrim being clad in nothing but the cloak of feathers he now sprawled on.

Perturabo didn’t actually... well, no one knew as much about this as Fulgrim, right? It wasn’t that he’d _never_ done it and didn’t know what went where, even if he usually resolved his frustrations with his own hand. Like making his bodyguards out of iron and clockwork, he preferred not to trust any human that close.

Ferrus would have understood, he thought. Would have understood now had he been in any position to think anything.

Still, he let Fulgrim’s hand close around his cock and stroke him. The grip was too light, hinting and teasing and drawing things out without giving him enough, as Fulgrim had been doing this entire mission so far. All the more reason to not let him take the lead here.

He reached across his floor to grab a jar of polishing oil and coat his fingers with it.

‘You don’t need to bother,’ Fulgrim told him, but Perturabo ignored him. Fulgrim’s plan, his terms, whatever his brother might be into. He didn’t make any effort to be gentle, though, just shoved a slicked finger in his ass.

Fulgrim moaned melodramatically and clung to him. Perturabo wasn’t going to admit it, but Fulgrim had been right. He had some sort of trick to relaxing his muscles without any help from him and accepted the intrusion easily even when Perturabo added two more fingers tentatively.

‘You shouldn’t let yourself get so frustrated. Take your time,’ Fulgrim said as he pulled his fingers out of his body impatiently.

‘If you wanted to fondle endlessly, you would have looked to your own Legion. You want it like this.’ For a change of pace or something. Perturabo suffered no delusions Fulgrim wanted him personally, but there was that and the fact they were primarchs. There was no one they could connect to like their brothers, no one else who wasn’t so weak and slow and breakable and easily overwhelmed.

Fulgrim let out a shuddering breath. ‘Fleeting pleasures fade, but I’m sure you’ll make it worth it. I want it hard.’

Perturabo was more inclined to roll him eyes than blush at this point. ‘Shut up,’ he repeated, though he had no expectation of it helping. He resettled himself between his brother’s legs and pushed all the way inside him in one sharp stroke.

Fulgrim cried out and Perturabo couldn’t stop a single moan from escaping him. Fulgrim felt amazing around him and he did something with his hips that made Perturabo see stars.

He didn’t let his brother take control. With his strength it was easy enough to hold him in place and set the pace on his own. Hard, fast, ungentle; hopefully that was what Fulgrim wanted, because it was what he was going to get. Pleasure built quickly inside Perturabo at the friction, and he moved all the more intensely as he sought more.

Fulgrim moaned and squirmed under him, drawing out every feeling. Perturabo ignored him as best he could and just fucked him. Pressure built in him as well as sensation as he slammed into Fulgrim over and over, until his breath caught as his whole being held completely still as if at the edge of a great precipice just before the acceleration of gravity took over.

Fulgrim stroked his arms and back as he recovered himself from his orgasm, and whimpered as Perturabo used his hand to get his brother off as well, though he knew he was only being humoured. ‘Did you like that? Do you want to go again? I can show you all sorts of things if you’ve gotten that frustration out of your system.’

‘Get out,’ Perturabo commanded, picking up his clothes.

The sharp lines and polished iron of the walls of his workshop had nothing to say, but at least they could be trusted--known melting point, reliable denting when hit with a hammer, not the haze and fog with nothing solid to hold onto of Fulgrim striving to be a riddle wrapped up in an enigma. He felt only more empty than before.


End file.
